


Of His Mind and My Own

by sherlockian_at_23174611



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dreamsharing, M/M, Post-Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-02-19
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-01-13 01:34:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1207939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sherlockian_at_23174611/pseuds/sherlockian_at_23174611
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the Fall, John struggles to make a life for himself without Sherlock, all the while having strange dreams of catching criminals and solving crimes. After the Fall, Sherlock dismantles Moriarty's Web all over Europe, all the while having strange dreams of being in 221B. Based on a prompt detailing a Sherlock AU in which there is a mental connection between Sherlock and John. Rated M for safety, Johnlock in later chapters.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Exhaustion

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is the first chapter in a series where there is a mental connection between John and Sherlock, mainly in their dreams. In this chapter, Sherlock is in Paris. Thank you to my great beta reader, ifyousaysodearie, for helping me out with this one. Please feel free to rate/comment/review! Any little bit helps! Thanks and enjoy!

Exhaustion weighed heavily on John’s eyes as the clock struck twelve. Rain poured and wind pounded on the windows facing Baker Street while the doctor got up and shuffled into the downstairs bedroom, the one that once belonged to _him_. After the Fall, John tried to stay away from Baker Street. The still-fresh pain of _his_ death clung to each tea cup and each crevice in the leather chair’s surface, but after only a week in his former flat, John would rather be constantly reminded of _him_ than risk ever forgetting. It was nights like this, bitingly cold and viciously stormy, that he could almost hear _his_ voice, that deep, resonating baritone complaining about their lack of cases, could almost see _him_ writhing about the flat, longing for something to do. But John didn’t care. Before retiring to the room of his once best friend, he looked about the flat, too exhausted to listen to the wind whistling _his_ voice or see the shadows that resembled his lost flatmate. No, instead John padded into _his_ bed and fell with a sound thump and was asleep before he could kick his trousers off.

Despite his exhaustion, John dreamed he was running down a narrow street sometime at night. Intuitively, he knew he was chasing someone, as opposed to be chased, and that he was close to catching the culprit. As he rounded the street corner, he saw the culprit sprawled on the ground close by and scrambling to get up. Seizing the opportunity, John quickly ran up and kicked the man down, pinning him underfoot.

Knowing there was no escape, the man looked up and pleaded, “Please, I can help you. I didn’t do anything! It was all him, I swear it! Plea-.”

The man was cut off midsentence by the bullet that cut through the man’s throat, severing the jugular vein with near surgical precision, eventually ending his life. Even in sleep, John felt the recoil of the gun from this hand all the way up his arm, into his shoulder. He felt the warmness of the handle from the shot and running with it in his hand. Most of all, he heard the sound of the gun being fired, ringing like the new year, effectively pulling him out of the strange dream with a shout.

Looking around the dark room, his pulse raced, the adrenaline still coursing through his veins. With a wipe of his brow and few steadying breaths, he was able to bring his mind back to the flat and check the time. The bedside clock read a blinding 2:30 AM. Fearing more stressful dreams, John managed to get his sleeping pills from the bedside table, swallow a few, and slip back into unconsciousness.

* * *

 

_One more down._

Sherlock crossed the name of the man he left in the alley off his list and made his way back to his dismal flat a few blocks away. With this latest kill in his book, he was only a few drug dealers away from dismantling the Paris branch of Moriarty’s Web. The dead man lying in the alley was a major figure in the local drug scene with strong ties to the Web. His death would result in the loss of thousands of dollars in revenue for those who would rather remain nameless.

Truthfully, Sherlock rather disliked killing himself. Too messy, he always thought. Lately, it became necessary to do the dirty work himself as opposed to waiting for one of Mycroft’s minions to handle it. Also, the way Sherlock saw it, every person he killed meant he was one dead body closer to seeing _John_.

_John_. Ah, the name had such a lovely, ordinary ring to it. Just the mere thought of the army doctor would flood Sherlock’s mind with images of cozy jumpers and long nights in 221B ending with the burning taste of Thai in the back of his throat. On nights when Sherlock felt like giving up, he would visit the good doctor’s blog page, just to make sure he was doing okay, that he lived on after the “suicide of the fake genius.” The day-to-day activities described in the doctor’s clean, plain prose soothed the once consulting detective, though he elected to ignore the sometimes not so subtle hints indicating depression. Amid nights full of chasing suppliers and various members of Europe’s underground, Sherlock lived for the moments stolen on the doctor’s blog.

Finally reaching his studio loft above a washed up Laundromat, Sherlock turned the key in the lock when he was hit with a sudden wave of exhaustion. He knew the adrenaline in his veins should keep him awake for hours. Unlike cocaine, whose euphoria only lasts about 10-15 minutes when injected (which was his past preference), the release of epinephrine, causing his now passed adrenaline rush, should only end after he did his specially developed exercise regime, as the remaining hormones lingering in his system needed to be dealt with. The information clicked along in his head like a typewriter, yet he was too tired to care why his body was not behaving the way it should. Feeling unsteady on his feet, the detective managed to get upstairs and into the lumpy mattress that served as his bed, and like his old flatmate, fell fast asleep before he could even kick off his trousers.

In his exhaustion, he failed to notice the bedside clock read a blinding 3:30 AM.


	2. The Next Morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After a night of peculiar, yet strangely familiar dreams all around, Sherlock and John try to figure out what they mean as they start their day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter than the first, unfortunately. I've been busy with the start of the quarter and such. Thanks again to the awesome ifyousaysodearie for beta-reading this one. Enjoy!

Sunlight streamed through the blinds of the dirty Parisian flat Sherlock passed out in the previous night. Sherlock stirred, feeling the midmorning light upon his face. Judging by the angle in which the light entered the room and the overall luminosity of it, Sherlock deduced the time was approximately 11:15. The time was confirmed by the bedside clock when Sherlock rolled over the side to get up. He shook off his clothes from the previous night, threw on some pajamas and padded to the kitchenette for some tea. While the kettle boiled, he ruminated over his peculiar dream.

He was back in London, in 221B Baker Street. The dream was ordinary enough. Actually, it was nearly identical to his own morning routine. He woke up in his old room in his old flat. After falling asleep in jeans a jumper, he changed his clothes and went to the kitchen to make tea. The table in the kitchen was completely clear of all his science equipment. He moved through the kitchen in a series of well-practiced movements, as though he had never left and the past year was spent solving crimes with John. After the kettle boiled, the dream dissolved into a series of mundane tasks, one after the other, that failed to capture any part of Sherlock’s memory. The last thing he remembered in was putting on a pair of shoes, tying his scarf around his neck, and leaving the flat, waking up the moment he closed the front door.

After going through his dream a few times, Sherlock finally discovered the peculiarity of it, or rather failed to discover. As many times as Sherlock thought through the dream, he realized that John was nowhere to be seen. There was no muted shower spray in the background, no footsteps from the floor above to indicate he was awake, nothing. However, based on items found around the flat—John’s laptop, his usual black coat on the coat hanger, a pay stub issued to a John H. Watson, M.D. peeking out of a coat pocket—the doctor was definitely at least living in the flat.

The kettle whistled, pulling Sherlock out of his thoughts and back to the flat. While preparing his tea, Sherlock considered the options: 1. John was still asleep upstairs—likely, given the lack of background noise to indicate he was awake—2. John was already at work at the surgery—also likely but not feasible considering a lack of physical evidence indicating so (his coat remained on the coat hanger throughout the dream)—3. John was downstairs having a chat with Mrs. Hudson as he sometimes did in the morning—considering there were no voices coming from the flat downstairs except a morning television program Mrs. Hudson was fond of, that was unlikely as well. Sherlock’s tea had almost gone cold as he thought over the dream.

He had had similar dreams before, all in the early morning hours. Sometimes he dreamt of waking up from a nightmare in his old room or even waking up in John’s room upstairs. Where ever he woke up, it was always in 221B.

On the other side of the room, Sherlock’s phone tittered. A text from Mycroft, then, most likely about the kill he made last night.

_Sloppy, leaving a body in the street like that._   
_Check your email for the next target._   
_MH_

Caught up in his next assignment, Sherlock all but forgot the dream, favoring the dull hit job over the enigma that left him feeling closer to John than he had in a year.

* * *

 

Life continued to be boring for John with Sherlock gone. His morning was typical. He woke up in his jumper from last night so he changed for the day, made tea, and read the paper before he left for work. One of the headlines announced a string of dead bodies found in Paris over the course of the last few weeks and the ongoing investigation, reminding John of the dream he had the previous night.

He remembered the feeling of the chase, the power of having the man underfoot, the heat of the gun in his hand after shooting the man. His dream was not unlike others he had had. On more than a few occasions, John dreamt he had been running through the streets of some city, always chasing someone. Sometimes he was able to catch and kill them, sometimes they got away. It was almost like he was chasing criminals around London again. And as much as he didn’t want to admit it, John missed it.

While most days he was grateful for the peaceful life he maintained, John would always have an itch that he knew would never be satisfied again. No, he would have to rise from the dead in order for that to happen and though he had asked on multiple occasions at his grave to not be dead, John knew that was an impossibility.

And yet, despite his sadness brought on by memories of his best friend, John put on his shoes, tied the detective’s scarf around his neck, and left for the surgery, wanting once more to feel close to him.


	3. Only if for the Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys. Sorry for taking so long to update. Its been crazy here at school. Our boys will be reunited in due time, so don't worry.
> 
> Thank you as always to the lovely ifyousaysodearie for the beta reading.

In the weeks following the dream of chasing and shooting the man, John continued to have similar dreams. All running, chasing, shooting unknown men through unknown streets and alleys with short spurts of detective work and sleuthing in between. Sometimes the people he chased begged in rapid fire French, leading him to eventually assume his dream-self was in France. And though John had only taken a few classes as a teenager, he was able to understand and respond in equally fast French. Despite some of the peculiar specifics of his dreams, each morning, we awoke breathless, pumped full of adrenaline, and depressed to be returning to his boring life. With each passing day, he would look forward to sleeping, to experiencing the excitement over and over again, like coming home to watch a favorite television program that came on every night. And as time went by, the dreams became more and more vivid.

This night, precisely 5 weeks and 2 days after the first dream of shooting and killing the man on the ground, John dreamt once more of the chase. This time however, John found himself in a new town. The street signs, while usually in French, now were in English, along with the other shop fronts in what seemed to be a village. What a chilly yet manageable 10 degrees Celsius was before was now a frigid 1 degree Celsius.

Despite the change in location and climate, he once more sleuthed and chased his way through the small village he was in, capturing and eliminating the chosen target in the icy pre-dawn. And when the man on the ground spoke, begging for his life like every other target, the man spoke with a thick Northern Irish accent.

Not skipping a beat, John shot the man, like so many times before, and crossed the man’s name of his list. He tucked his gun into the discrete holster he wore underneath his coat and languidly walked back to whatever lodging his mind had conjured.

He arrived in a meager room on the second floor of an inn. The hearty scent of bread baking in the kitchen below his room wafted through the window as he undressed and prepared for bed. After wiggling out of his trousers, he finally fell onto the lumpy mattress, heavy with exhaustion. The last thing he remembered before drifting asleep was sending Mycroft Holmes a text, though John failed to notice the signature on the message:

It’s done.  
SH

* * *

 

Where France was uncharacteristically warm, Northern Ireland was uncharacteristically cold.

With Moriarty’s branch in Paris thoroughly dismantled, Mycroft relocated Sherlock to Belfast to take care of some final loose ends. As much as Sherlock hated following his brother’s orders, he was grateful to be closer to home, to John, even though the doctor did not know of his propinquity.

His hit list still contained a fair few of people, all degenerates who had previously fled while Sherlock was hunting them in other countries. Even though the list seemed lengthy and this would take longer than expected, he took comfort in the fact that he would be able to go back to 221B once more.

His hopeful thinking brought him to memories of the peculiarly ordinary dreams he had been having the last 5 weeks and 1 day of the flat he used to occupy. Every night, it was the same dream: waking up in his room downstairs, showering, dressing, eating breakfast while reading the morning paper, tying his shoes and scarf, and leaving the flat for the day. Every night, in that order.

The routine was comforting. The sheer predictability of his dreams served as a reminder for what he left behind and why he was doing these assignments.

_John._

Though the doctor’s absence from his dreams was saddening, he was still all too grateful for the illusion of proximity to the man. The lingering scent of John’s cologne and subtle mix of his pheromones permeated every inch of his dreams, each successive night more vivid and maddening than the last.

Sherlock let himself be lost in the thoughts of his best and only friend while waiting for this night’s target in an alley. When he got a visual on the target, he abandoned the thoughts of his former life in exchange for the pursuit of the criminal.

Before long, the target was eliminated and Sherlock was left to his previous thoughts for the remainder of the night, where he spent at an inn.

The inn he was staying in was small and campy, obviously built and run for tourists looking for an “authentic” experience, complete with too-thick accents from the innkeepers and stereotypical décor. The front entrance was a simple oak door, though it was distressed to make it look like it had been standing for centuries when really it had been built in the 70s by the looks of the foundation. The rounded stones of the walls were artfully worn down to give the appearance of old age.

He walked into the inn, past the reception desk, and up the stairs to his room. It was sparsely furnished, again with motifs representing what tourists think a Northern Irish inn is supposed to be. He undressed for bed, breathing in the cool night air that mingled with the warm scent of the bakery below. He laid down on the old mattress, sent a message to Mycroft and eagerly drifted to sleep, thankful to be returning to 221B once more, only if for the night.


	4. To Stare the Past Down the Barrel of a Gun

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the Web dismantled, Sherlock gathers his courage to return to an uncertain future at Baker Street while John wakes up to the sound of an intruder and a shattered teacup.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it has been so long since the last chapter was posted. School ended and I immediately started work. I will definitely try to get another chapter out soon. Thank you once more to the amazing ifyousaysodearie for the beta read. Enjoy!

It was time.

After another three weeks of work and loose ends in Belstaff, it was time for Sherlock to return to London, to Baker Street.

To John.

He was still unsure as to how the good doctor would react to his surprise reanimation, but he tried to believe that he and John would have a long conversation over a pot of tea and some biscuits and the whole thing would mend itself with time. After all, John simply must have missed him as much as he missed John, right?

The overnight bag he had been lugging around Europe for the past two years was packed, and a plane ticket bound for Heathrow airport was neatly tucked into the breast pocket of the suit jacket he was to wear. It was the night before his return and all he could manage to do was sit on the edge of the lumpy hotel mattress and try to convince himself that everything was going to be okay. He held his head in his hands, propped up by his knees and tried so desperately not to cry. Because no matter how much he told himself that two years of abandonment and grief could be solved with some tea and a case, there was a nagging bit in the back of his mind that told him that that was not how things happened.

Sherlock knew John was emotional and sentimental, that this time they’ve spent apart would have changed him in ways that neither of them could reverse.

_Friendships are built on mutual experiences. This is why when friends are apart, their relationships become ever more distant._

Cold, hard facts rang in Sherlock’s head like the bells of the Notre Dame, yet he still clung onto the hope that 221B would not be empty or occupied by a new tenant when he arrived, that John’s coat would still be hanging on the coat rack by the door as it had before and in all of his dreams.

The dreams he had reverently clung to fueled his resolve of returning to Baker Street, the promise of freshly brewed tea in the morning and a mildly exhausted John telling him how amazing and how difficult he was, all in the same breath.

It was these pictures of John Watson, his John Watson that he kept in his pocket and underneath his pillow as he slept in the unsatisfying bed in Northern Ireland for the last time. 

* * *

 

Days continued to pass as John’s dreams of excitement and adventure in Northern Ireland, a heady combination of chilly night air on his flushed skin and bread baking as he fell asleep, counterbalanced his boring life. Days at the surgery ending with crap telly and a few boxes of Thai take-out were only redeemed by the dream world he visited every night.

This day was especially hard on the weary doctor. A patient with tousled dark hair and a Belstaff coat came into the surgery with a cold. While his eyes weren’t quite the right swirl of cerulean and granny smith apple-green and his cupid’s bow was nowhere near as sharp as Sherlock’s was, John still had to choke back more than a few tears as he silently wrote the man a prescription for whatever drug he asked for; anything to get him out of there.

Eager to close the freshly opened wound brought on by memories of Sherlock, his Sherlock, John took a sleeping pill, washed down with some whiskey, and basked in the glow of the drugs processing in his system while he drifted into yet another dreamtime adventure.

The eventual fade to black did not bring John to the streets of Belstaff, but rather to Baker Street, just a few feet away from his own door. He was carrying an overnight bag in his left hand and trepidation in his heart; deep down, he was both overjoyed and terrified at the encounter he knew was coming.

He continued to walk along the sidewalk and eventually stopped in front of the familiar black door, brass numbers and knocker glinting slightly in the ambient light. He took a deep breath, unlocked the door, and proceeded inside.

John proceeded up the steps to his flat, hand shaking on the rail. When he reached the landing, he stared at the door, unsure of what may be on the other side, be it a new tenant or no one at all. With another deep breath, he opened that door and tiptoed into the dark room.

Everything was exactly the way he left it when he went to bed that night, from his overcoat and shoes by the door down to the half-finished glass of whiskey on the table by the sofa. Seeing the bottle of sleeping pills next to the glass troubled him, much to his surprise. He eventually realized how reckless that was and moved onto the kitchen. Another pang of sadness hit him when he saw the empty kitchen table, devoid of all of Sherlock’s experiments. He set his overnight bag next to the chair and walked to the sink to get a glass of water to drink. In the darkness, he failed to see tea cup on the counter by the water filter and was jolted awake as the glass shattered in his dream.

John sat up in bed for a bit, a little disappointed at the turn his dream had taken. He rubbed his eyes and was about to fall back asleep when he heard was sounded like ceramic being placed in his trash bin. His reached for the Sig Sauer he kept by his bed and quietly crept out of the room, finger on the trigger and barrel pointed at the black figure in his kitchen.

“Hands up, now.”

The figure froze, still holding a few shards of ceramic in his hands poised over the garbage bin.

“But-”

“I said, put your hands up. Never mind the bloody tea cup.”

With his aim still steady on the figure, John assessed the situation. There were no signs of a break in; there were still keys in the lock on the door. Nothing appeared to be taken from his wallet or even the coin tray in the kitchen. It seemed like the intruder had merely come in for a cup of tea.

Once John finally decided to let the intruder go, he noticed an overnight bag on the floor, identical to the one in his dream, in the exact same spot he had placed it in his dream. Combined with the shattering of the tea cup, realization began to dawn on John right as the intruder spoke for the second time.

“John, before you shoot me, let me ask,” the dark figure turned around, hands in the air and continued in a voice that could only belong to one person on this Earth, “how did you know it was a tea cup?”


End file.
